TRENTON, N.J. (RNS) Two brothers have admitted to playing roles in a bizarre plot to kidnap, beat and torture a recalcitrant Orthodox Jewish husband to convince him to give his wife a religious divorce, authorities said.

(RNS) David Hellman admitted to traveling with seven co-conspirators from New York to a New Jersey warehouse with the intention of forcing a Jewish man to give his wife a divorce document known under Jewish law as a “get.”

(RNS) According to a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday (Oct. 10), the four are accused of charging families thousands of dollars to get recalcitrant husbands to agree to divorces, frequently by violent means.

(RNS) In the 40 years since America’s first female rabbi was ordained, nearly 650 female rabbis have entered the Reform movement. Yet, Jewish and Christian clergywomen still face visible and invisible obstacles in their careers.

NEW YORK (RNS) “I understand better today than I did then that sometimes, when you think you are doing good, your actions do not measure up,” wrote Rabbi Norman Lamm, for decades a leading figure in Orthodox Judaism.

(RNS) A well-known Jewish adage says that one should “repent one day before your last one.” Religion News Service spoke to a variety of rabbis about what their final Jewish New Year message to their flock before leaving the pulpit would be. By Beth Kissileff.